You may not know that NBP publishes two braille magazines: Syndicated Columnists Weekly and Our Special, or OS.

Every OS contains original articles by eight blind contributing editors – making it the only magazine by and for blind women. Published since 1930, the bi-monthly OS also contains articles drawn from popular women’s magazines - think O: The Oprah Magazine and Family Circle.

An OS subscriber wrote in with a suggestion. She, like many of the magazine’s readers, likes to hold on to the recipes in the popular “Kitchen Corner” section of the magazine. But the bulky 100-page braille magazines start to pile up! OS editor Dana Nichols says, “I have a lot of old magazines I’ve kept for the recipes in them. Collecting braille magazines can take up a lot of room... finding enough space for those old magazines is a problem; they begin to crowd you out.”

The solution suggested by our OS reader was that we pull out the "Kitchen Corner" recipes into their own discrete section. We did a little research and found it would be easy to create a pull-out section – a slim, 12-page booklet that’s practically a brochure! This way, readers can remove the recipes without needing to store the whole issue - and it also makes it easier to read recipes while cooking.

As always, some of the best ideas tend to come from our loyal and passionate readers, and so it was with this latest innovation – though innovation is not the right word! Editor Dana Nichols reminds us, “OS used to be done that way, and it was frustrating to try to razor-blade the recipes out when it changed to the way it is now.”

Sometimes the old ways are the best ways. Now, I’m waiting for readers to start asking that we do the same with the knitting section, or the crafts section, or…